THE WHO: EBAY SELLS MY MEATY BEATY BIG AND BOUNCY REVIEW

It has been brought to my attention that, astonishingly, a cutting from Melody Maker dated December 4, 1971, specifically my review of The Who’s album Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy, is being offered for sale on ebay, priced at £2.

Here it is:

It’s not surprising that I gave the album an excellent review. It was, after all, the first decent compilation of Who hit singles. The first, Magic Bus The Who On Tour, released in the US September, 1968, was compromised by MCA’s choice of material and ill-disguised attempt to imply it was a live recording, while the second, The Who: Direct Hits, released by Track in the UK a month later, was flawed because Kit Lambert insisted that no Shel Talmy productions be included. 

I shall draw a veil over my feelings about the surfeit of subsequent Who hits albums, but I seem to have been unusually prescient by commenting that The Who ‘are making the most of their history in re-issues’.

I still have my original copy of MBBB, on the Decca label, given to me by Who tour manager Peter Rudge in Charlotte, North Carolina, on November 20 in the Holiday Inn where The Who were staying before their gig at the Charlotte Coliseum. He’d just received a box of them, couriered by MCA from Los Angeles, for the group, and we all gathered in his room to admire them. It occurs to me now that I was in the ideal position to ask Pete, Roger, John and Keith to autograph one for me but I didn’t. It simply wasn’t cool for music writers to collect autographs, more’s the pity.

         This was my first visit to America, though it wasn’t paid for by The Who or their record label. In fact, I’d flown to New York at the expense of The Kinks to attend a party thrown to celebrate their signing to RCA. At the same party were John and Keith from The Who and I wound up partying with them until the early hours at Nobody’s, a then notorious R&R bar in Greenwich Village, and discovering along the way that they were about to open a tour down America’s East Coast in two day’s time. Unable for reasons of managerial incompetence to interview The Kinks, I opted instead to join The Who in Charlotte, NC, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

         When I got back to London I wrote about both The Kinks and The Who for MM, including the review now offered on ebay. Here’s the link:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323248037068?ul_noapp=true

THE WHO – LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST, 1968

Well, well, well, what have we here? Praise be, for it is nothing less than the first ‘new’ and officially sanctioned live recording from The Who’s golden era since the live version of Tommy (from Ottawa, October 15, 1969) that was included in the 2013 de lux two-CD re-issue of Pete’s first rock opera.* Furthermore, it predates that by about 18 months having been recorded at the Fillmore East in New York on April 6, 1968, when The Who were on the cusp of becoming the greatest live rock band the world has ever seen. The fairly brief Monterey set and the BBC sessions aside, this represents the earliest and, in terms of historical significance, most important archive release ever from The Who. Although available as a bootleg for years, it is deeply satisfying that such a noteworthy slice of Who history has finally been given a proper release.

In 1968 The Who’s recording career was temporarily in the doldrums but, crucially, they were blazing a trail on the US concert circuit that opened the doors to a new kind of rock performance which continues in far more sophisticated forms to this day. They, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Band and Cream (who unlike The Who were formed for the purpose), saw the future: shows that would last for 90 minutes or more in which hit singles and LP tracks would be performed loudly and in ways that far enhanced the original recordings, either through sheer volume or musical virtuosity or both. Added to this would be improvisation, a liberating stage show enriched by lighting effects and the chance to hear new material yet to be released or even recorded.

This sort of thing required skills and temperament lacking in almost all the pop groups that emerged in the wake of The Beatles. The Who, however, were ideally equipped for this new era of presentation: their song-writing guitarist was enthusiastically unrestrained on stage, their bass player was extraordinarily proficient, their drummer was a wild, abandoned showman and their singer was relishing the opportunity to prove himself. All of this contributed to the kind of show that rock audiences had never seen before and, thanks to word of mouth and Tommy, within 18 months of this Fillmore concert The Who had raced through the pack to become the brand leaders of the modern age.

Promoter Bill Graham initially booked The Who for two shows a night over two nights but this plan was abandoned due to fears that the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King on April 4 might trigger unrest in Greenwich Village. Instead they played two longer shows, one on each night, both of which their co-manager Kit Lambert recorded for a live LP that was subsequently shelved. In the event things went awry with the tapes of the April 5 show, so all 14 tracks on this double CD come from the following night.

Regrettably, the opening songs, ‘Substitute’ and ‘Pictures Of Lily’, also proved unusable, so CD1 opens with the third number played, ‘Summertime Blues’, the first of three Eddie Cochran numbers in the evening's set.

Although it’s just less than a minute longer than the well-known version from Live At Leeds, it doesn’t seem so. It’s taken at a slightly quicker tempo and Pete’s guitar, a white Fender Stratocaster, has a sharper, angrier, more metallic tone than the Gibson SGs he switched to playing the following year. Keith explodes at the back, Roger sings his heart out, John chips in on the bass vocal and Pete solos fairly recklessly, his Strat in distort mode, and when they shift up a key for the final verse there’s a sense that The Who are out to prove something tonight.

‘Fortune Teller’ follows, a touch more ragged than on Leeds. As on Leeds they up the tempo at 1.50 but there’s a slight hesitation, perhaps because, if Pete’s introduction is to be believed, this was only the second time they’d played it live, at least since they were The Detours. Similarly, the segue into ‘Tattoo’ is a tad tentative, but once they’re into their stride the vocals especially, Roger joined by Pete and John, are top notch.

‘Little Billy’, the anti-smoking song, is prefaced by a fairly lengthy explanation from Pete as to why it was written and recorded. A bit of a curiosity that remained unreleased until John thought to include it on Odds And Sods in 1974, this was the first time I’d heard it played live, and they make a decent fist of it, with the threesome on vocals again impressive.

An absolutely crackling ‘Can’t Explain’ follows, with Keith skittering all over his kit during the breaks and Pete soloing quite differently from the recorded single and subsequent live versions. Equally strong is ‘Happy Jack’, another showcase for Pete’s power chords and Keith’s expressive drums.

Nevertheless, these performances seem almost throwaways compared to the first real highlight of the show, a 12-minute version of ‘Relax’ in which Pete throws off all restraints and solos free form for the best part of 10 minutes. My friend Andy Neill’s essay in the accompanying booklet draws attention to Pete’s recent visits to the UFO Club on London’s Tottenham Court Road where Pink Floyd, led by Syd Barrett, perfected the art of psychedelic jams. While the Floyd were never inclined, or probably even able, to attack a song in the manner of The Who, it’s clear that Pete was thinking along the same lines as Syd, especially towards the end of this lengthy workout when he conjures up some spacey echo washes from his guitar. Not until 30 seconds before the end does he find his way back into the melody and allow Roger to close out a final verse.

‘I’m A Boy’, again rougher than on Leeds and marred by slightly off pitch backing vocals and a sloppy finish, is followed by ‘A Quick One’, the mini-opera, introduced by Pete as indicative of the direction that The Who’s career will shortly take, at least on record. It’s as good a live rendering as I’ve heard anywhere, powered up by the clang of Pete’s Fender and the hint of a blues lick here and there. As ever, the vocals are outstanding. The climax – ‘You Are Forgiven’ – is fast and furious, and as the mini-opera cruises to its conclusion there’s some lovely little fills and arpeggios from Pete that don’t appear on other live versions of the piece that I’ve heard.  

Now up to racing speed, The Who thrash out a couple more Eddie Cochran songs, ‘My Way’ and ‘C’mon Everybody’, of which the latter, though shorter, is the pick of the pair. The group barely take time to catch a breath before Pete launches into the descending ‘Shakin’ All Over’ riff and the group tumble into this, for my money the best pre-Beatle rock’n’roll song to be recorded by any British act. Longer than Leeds, it’s a full-tilt downhill ride, Roger at his full-throated best giving all he’s got on a song he clearly loves to sing. Pete’s solo is another improvised leap into the unknown, with searing feedback added to spontaneous riffs while John thunders away on the well-known secondary riff.

There’s a two-minute respite while John offers up ‘Boris The Spider’ before Pete introduces ‘My Generation’ which, at 33 minutes, occupies the entire second CD. After two regular verses, the bass solo and one more verse, the song veers off into a free-form universe of its own, Pete taking the basic riff and twisting it first into a bluesy figure, then into a more Who-style open-handed barrage of chord riffs and ringing strings, John and Keith gamely hanging on, waiting for cues.

Longer and even more abstract than the ‘My Generation’ jam on Leeds, this is the most prolonged Who jam on record, with Pete somehow taking on the mantle of an impressionist painter, looking for ways to utilise his palette, melodic one moment, discordant the next, sharp and shuddering one moment, echo-laden and bell-like the next. Although the octave drops are absent, there are recognisable snatches of ‘Rael’, as it was then known, or ‘Sparks/Underture’ as it became in Tommy, but they ebb and flow and, as they dissolve into another free-form attack, it seems at times as if Pete is out at sea, his guitar his rudder, feeling his way through the water until he finds an undercurrent that leads him home. At around the 14.30-point John becomes more assertive, leaving Pete in a jazzy mood, and a couple of minutes later Keith comes to the fore, his strength on the snare cutting through the waves. At around the 20-minute mark there’s a sense that it might all fall apart, but Keith comes to the rescue with a series of rolls that inspire Pete to produce a searing clamour, sliding his pick up and down the bottom string of his guitar and yanking its tremolo arm before bringing it all back into some sort of shape on an improvised, repeated riff. Then, of course, it happens again, and again.

Left high and dry while all this is going on around him, Roger isn’t heard from until the 28^th minute when he begins to sing, ‘Talking about…’, but he soon abandons the attempt. Two minutes later the group seem to run out of steam, but then return for one final three-minute assault in which guitar and bass seem to unite as one, John seeming to replicate the sound of Big Ben chiming the hour while Pete lays waste a guitar that has served its purpose with honour. As Andy Neill puts it, “The Fillmore patrons must have left dazed and confused.”

I saw The Who for the first time 16 months after this concert was recorded by which time they were a bit more polished than they are here. But the odd bum note and missed change was only to be expected when you consider the athleticism that Pete, Roger and Keith put into their performance while John looked on like a wise old owl, knowing that someone had to hold it all together. There’s a tangible awareness of The Who’s future on this CD – they know it and the audience knows it – and that great things lie just around the corner. Smartly designed and packaged with photographs taken at the show by Linda Eastman, as she then was, it is – quite simply – a peerless snapshot of The Who on the verge of becoming the greatest rock’n’roll band of their generation.

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* http://justbackdated.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/notes-on-live-tommy-2013.html

MELODY MAKERS, SHOULD’VE BEEN THERE

To London’s Regent Street Cinema for a showing of Melody Makers, Should’ve Been There, a documentary about the music paper where I sowed the seeds that nourished me thereafter. The film was followed by a Q&A session in which I took part and for which I prepared myself by spending a pleasant two hours in the morning leafing through a dozen or so old copies of MM that I bought from a trader in old newspapers many years ago. I don’t often do this but whenever I do it becomes very moreish and I don’t want to stop because when that period of my life, from 1970 to 1977, comes back into focus, I wish I could turn back the clock, if only for a day.

The film has that effect too. It started life as a celebration of the work of our chief contributing photographer Barrie Wentzell who now lives in Toronto, the home town of its director Leslie Ann Coles. Somehow the two met and Leslie was shown Barrie’s archive, without doubt one of the richest rock photo archives in the world, at least for the period when he worked principally for MM, which was 1965 to 1975. Leslie proposed making a film based around Barrie’s photographs and Barrie suggested expanding the project to tell the story of the rise and fall of MM, which the film attempts to do. This, of course, is a big story in itself, Melody Maker having first appeared on newsstands in January 1926 and lasting until December 1999. Although its demise and, to a lesser extent, its beginnings are discussed by the movie’s interviewees, this premise is actually secondary to an analysis of Melody Maker’s importance during what many of us consider to be its golden years, roughly the period of Barrie’s involvement, especially in the early seventies when its circulation soared to around 200,000 a week, the highest it ever reached.

(The author and Barrie, at the Lincoln Festival, May 1972, photo by Jill Furmanovsky)

For one hour and 37 minutes the film flips back and forth between Barrie’s pictures and about 20 talking heads, among them former MM staff, musicians and industry figures, discoursing on MM’s role in the scheme of things, the way the music business has changed and how rock’n’roll journalism ain’t what it used to be. In this respect the film’s ambition is a bit too lofty to occupy its time span and some interviewees stray off the subject of MM and, inopportunely, into the counterculture in general, especially those with an agenda of their own to promote, but by and large it’s an entertaining movie about an entertaining era with many entertaining, occasionally funny, moments.

Barrie is unquestionably the star of the show. Without doubt, his pictures gave Melody Maker a look that all the other music mags must have envied. Before he joined MM’s editorial team all the music papers, MM included, used photographs of stars supplied by record labels or PR companies, so the same shots appeared everywhere and were used over and over again. Barrie, then working in design but with ambitions to express himself with a camera, somehow obtained access to a Diana Ross press event at the BBC, photographed her (superbly) and brought the results to MM’s then editor Jack Hutton who used the picture on the front page of the issue dated October 16, 1965.

(Barrie with his photo of Diana Ross, his first MM cover)

Thereafter Barrie’s pictures of every rock star of note graced MM’s front page most weeks for the next 10 years, and hundreds of these photographs, almost all of them in sharply contrasting monochrome, flash across the screen throughout the movie, a visual feast that applauds Barrie’s uncanny ability to capture the moment with his black Pentax. Both on stage and, often, in the homes of the stars, Barrie’s pictures stray into the realm of art, homages to his hero Henri Cartier-Bresson; like the shot of three cats and a bowl of fruit on a table while Roger Waters looks wistfully on, or the quizzical expression on Dylan’s face as gazes into the lens in a pub over pints of beer, or Bowie grinning with fans, wearing a jacket with lapels that reach way beyond his skinny shoulders. 

Barrie, it seems, has kept every single one his negatives and the point is made that had he been working today, in the digital era, he would have discarded hundreds of photos just like we all do when we use our mobile phones to take snaps and delete all but the one that is worth keeping. A poignant moment in the movie sees him at work in his darkroom, recreating the working methods he used back in the day, watching Jimi Hendrix, a favourite subject, emerge on printing paper in his developing tray.

Those of us interviewed for the film who worked on the paper, Chris Welch, Richard Williams, Alan Lewis, Allan Jones, Barrie and myself, talk about what it was like to be in music journalism in an era when we could often circumvent PRs; when the music industry was less controlled, less formalised, than it is now. Barrie, whose congenial personality not only put his subjects at ease but enabled him untold access to stars that today’s rock photographers can only dream about, bristles with indignation when, towards the end of the film, he recalls being informed by a Stones’ minion that he and others can photograph the group only during the first number of a show at Wembley Arena. It was, he feels, a key turning point, the beginning of the end, and not long afterwards he hung up those black Pentaxes, which he still has, and went to work in his brother’s greengrocers on the Isle of Wight. I couldn’t help but feel that the Stones were the losers here, especially after having just admired Barrie’s outstanding portraits of Jagger. I mean, didn’t these guys want great pictures of themselves in the papers?

After the movie Leslie Ann Coles, Chris Welch and myself answered questions put to us by Steve Chibnall, Professor of British Cinema and Director of Cinema and Television History Research Centre at Du Montfort University, Leicester, where the film is being shown on April 14. I always feel a bit like the junior partner at these affairs when I’m alongside my namesake Welchy for he joined MM in 1964, six years before me, and lingered on for a good few years after I left, so he took the mike for the most part, closing his remarks by stating that were he to win the Euro Millions lottery tomorrow he’d spend the cash relaunching MM for the 21st century. How could I not join him in such a splendid enterprise? Here we all are, photographed by my daughter Olivia who chided me afterwards for expressing a pessimistic outlook for the future of music journalism. “It might not be in print but it will flourish on line dad,” she said. I hope she’s right.

RIP NME AND THE END OF A CULTURE

It is heartening to get so many Facebook likes for observing the last rites of NME, heartening because it reflects the affection with which the UK’s weekly press, be it New Musical Express or Melody Maker or any of the rest, are still held by those who used to read them. Then again, maybe it’s not that surprising really because – staggering as it seems today – in their heyday, when MM was top of the heap selling 200,000 copies a week, NME wasn’t that far behind, on 180,000 I think, Sounds third with 100,000 and the two also-rans, Disc & Music Echo and Record Mirror, on 50,000 each. That’s 580,000 music papers sold every week in this little island of ours, over 30 million a year, and you can be sure that they were read by many more than that as they were passed around in colleges, offices, clubs, pubs, maybe even doctors’ waiting rooms. There were so many readers that it stands to reason that many of them will this week mourn not just NME but the weekly music press culture that was unique to the UK. 

This mega-circulation era was around 1972, when MM was in its pomp, so much so that its publisher IPC Business Press was prepared to stump up for a staff member to live in New York (in an apartment paid for by them, inclusive of all utility and phone bills plus a living allowance exclusive of salary, same as foreign correspondents on the national press) and report back on what was happening in America, an expense that would cause bean-counters apoplexy today. Three of us got that wondrous gig, Roy Hollingworth, Michael Watts and myself, and I still believe it was the best job in the world in music journalism, better than any editorship, just absolute rock'n'roll nirvana regardless of the perks. MM’s success in the first half of the 1970s forged a bond between the staff that lasts to this day: Richard Williams, Chris Welch, Michael, Geoff Brown and myself meet for lunch about twice a year to relive old times, and most of us have been amongst the mourners at the funerals of those we have lost: Roy, our editor Ray Coleman, Carole Clerk and Rob Partridge. I liken it to having played together on a football team that long ago won the league title. 

By the time the US job ended, in 1977, MM’s crown had slipped and NME was top dog, deservedly so under the editorship of Nick Logan with Charlie Murray, Nick Kent, Ian MacDonald and the rest carrying the torch that I like to think we had lit earlier in the decade. Nevertheless the combined circulation of the music weeklies, now joined by Kerrang! (surviving still) was still around half a million a week. (Any rivalry was strictly corporate. We were on friendly terms with the writers from other papers and one NME writer and I were ‘an item’ for a while.) This culture of weekly music magazines was exclusive to the UK; no other country saw anything like it. There were no national music weeklies to cater to fans in the US, only Lisa Robinson’s breathless New York weekly Rock Scene, dry weekly music business publications like Billboard and Cashbox and biweekly Rolling Stone. Elsewhere in Europe some countries boasted a single weekly or monthly paper, and in Australia there was Go-Set which syndicated articles from MM, as did one in Sweden. Only the UK had such a thriving weekly music press, and the competition between the titles was what kept us lively and on our toes.

It was an era way before computers or even commercial radio. Televised pop consisted only of Top Of The Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test. Acts had fan clubs that circulated newsletters but the only way to find out what your favourite act was up to, if they were going to release a new single or album or go out on tour, or if they were splitting up or changing personnel, was to read the music press. With those acts like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, who demurred from appearing on TV or using photographs of themselves on their album sleeves, the only way to found out what they actually looked like was to go and see them, not always an option, or look at the photographs of them in the music press. 

Even though I lost touch with the ups and downs of the fortunes of NME and MM during the eighties I continued to read them. I began to think that NME was becoming too political for its own good, losing its way amidst an editorial policy that promoted left-wing ideology over music. I agreed with the ideology – it was the Thatcher era after all – but felt music magazines should cover music and political magazines politics. Meanwhile, MM seemed desperate to outdo A&R men by finding the next big thing before they did, which was admirable enough but resulted in a few sub-par acts appearing on the front page and being hailed as saviours when they were anything but. Both papers tended to ignore the really popular acts, the ones that were selling out arenas, because they were insufficiently hip in the eyes of their staff, and this had a detrimental effect on their circulation, giving rise to monthly magazines that treated musicians on the wrong side of 30 with more respect, in some cases probably more than they deserved. All of this coincided with the CD era in which music became a soundtrack to a certain lifestyle in which the participants didn’t care that much about the musicians whose user-friendly little silver discs they played as background music to dinner parties or in their cars and as a result weren’t much interested in reading about them. Then came the internet. 

In the meantime I began to suspect, wrongly as it turned out, that the generation of young MM writers after my own might not welcome the company of those who’d gone before. I felt they might be envious of the largesse we’d enjoyed (that US job, the fairly outrageous record industry hospitality), that they might feel we had been too benign towards the acts compared to their more confrontational approach, and that they wouldn’t want to listen to any ‘in my day’ litanies so redolent of sports commentators who were once players themselves. Happily, this assumption was proved wrong after I commissioned a 90s-era MM writer to write a book for Omnibus Press and was invited to his wedding. Assuming that no one would be discourteous to me if I was accompanied by a 12-year-old girl I took my daughter Olivia along, but there I was, surrounded by the MM generation I thought might snub me, all of them eager to hear about the days when we sold 200,000 copies a week. 

Now, that golden era of the weekly music press is a distant memory. As for myself, back in 1977, after seven years on MM I knew my time was up. When I turned 30 I thought I was too old to continue – which sounds ridiculous now – but I got out because I felt I couldn’t sustain the required enthusiasm in my writing. I wanted to try something else in music, which I did. Many years passed until, three years ago, I launched this blog at the suggestion of that same daughter. A few years earlier, aged 19, she’d worn a rare Keith Moon t-shirt of mine to a party and was surrounded by boys her own age wanting to know where she got it. When she explained that her dad used to know him and that he had been associated with The Who professionally, she was pestered with questions about me to the point where she wished she’d never worn the damn t-shirt. When Olivia told me this I figured it was time to start a blog and when, with her encouragement, I did so I rediscovered that same enthusiasm for writing about music and musicians that I had in the early seventies, though I’m not sure how long it’ll last. 

But I digress. The loss of NME on top of all the rest is the final nail in the coffin of a culture that I mourn deeply because I was lucky enough to play a small role in it, and that makes me doubly sad.